H
e a r t S o n s & H e a r t D a u g h t e r s of A l l e n G i n s
b e r g
N
a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i
v e s E d i t i o n
AKILAH OLIVER
Excerpt
from “The Putterer’s Notebook: an anti-Memoir”
The line, non-continuous remainder
Waking and walking those streets post
drag world, two rationed cities
situated in soviet
anti-revivalism
‘schwarze’ appears to be a declaration but I knew I couldn’t trust
him when he
pretended he didn’t know
that word plus in Boulder once, that lousy apartment building
on Canyon and 22nd, he sold me fake meth. a broken
light bulb is a sad conductor
foreign then faint
mediocre I first
learned on normandie avenue when walking past
barbershops, those men
& beards and
what they do when men gather with electric razors and scissors sit in high
chairs,
the world a postcard of old black men sitting on
folding chairs in front of Brooklyn
brownstone with the
caption ‘my Brooklyn, 4th annual photo + essay contest exhibition’
but looking now
I can see they are not so old, just
captured by a lens that condenses a body
to a dissipation,
to a relic, to a mail slot
(this tone must
have something to do with the not so alive, i.e. dead father)
I this now,
if this is not
how one spells ‘leprechaun’ then it doesn’t exist as an idea or curatorial
curiosity
I had a breakfast nook when I didn’t pay
for anything
Keeping the steady pace seems to be the
key, not to look down at the
cracks but rather
memorize their proximity to the leg’s, stride, the motion, so as to not tip
(and pour me
out)
On the way to the beans and rice, red
would be better today rather than pinto, I
think I hear a
bell-bottom pants leg flapping in a mothership, but
that would be
the los angeles coliseum hosting history in ’72 or so,
the humidity here
, but not a here that would indicate there, that place, now
pestering the mind like
hunger
Shhh, stop that
racket, derrida’s whispering about the politics of
friendship
& that
French accent is making it two times hard to hear already, like the ‘hissing of
summer lawns’, fanon
in his masks
I want the radio on again to discover the
new music and it be perhaps sexy, the butt
slapping braying on a
video screen, wouldn’t it be nice
There was a song about a teapot, won’t
you tip me over and pour me out, & now I see
how young you were
then,
fun is the
password
Daddy’s here in a silver buick leSabre
and its time for the beach, goodbye
mother, so sorry
you’re not happy but could we have pork n beans next Friday and hug
The beginning notes, an entry into a
dream that is a faille like texture, one that
does not need to
hesitate at the entry into the messiah’s denouement
False documentary declarations, like
“when time moved forward”, as if time were
able to do things
like that, as if it were an action rather than a calculation, a marker, a
decision and counter, a
mathematical construction
It was if they had switched themselves,
physically, and I had not moved though I
had, and by many
narrative accounts tragically so
remembering one
unmentionable which I told once to my ‘best friend’, now
hoping she’s
forgotten that intimacy
Such as such intimacies present as the
declaration of a perimeter
you
.. . .
; ; ‘ ; ; :
. , , , ,, ,,
you were not concluding
a desire, backed against the wall, your upper thigh
exposed through the
riddling stockings
as an event can simultaneously be
happening and not be occurring, a
very first morning
a passing across
the self, & my old friend the
radio, red velvet hot pants, a
fashion show
graduation from the Sears Charm School for girls, mix and match
I wanted a self so badly,
I turned the dial to see what was on the other side, joan
armatrading, we tried
chance translations of ‘jah’ based loosely on context
clues, that girl
my sister, I saw
her last month in l.a. at
the wedding, I thought she’d be a surfer or the
wife of an O.G.,
surprise all the time, Christian lady, you look so much younger now, as
if all the
blighted apartments have been repaired
what a pretty world
out there
I am a new occupant, but this particular
morning, for example, found me
wandering in terrorist
shadows
The death dreams are often sexualized,
the first, a morphing pool of consecrated
limbs floundering
and touching in what appeared a murky body pool
to get to, one
had to pass through a portal, not a door exactly, more like a veil, it
was duplicitous
its appearance, both sensuous and repelling, quicksand like, pleasure in
the going down,
the limbs indistinguishable from the souls, a man who was neither
good nor evil
seemed to be the sentry
I kept telling him not to go, I couldn’t
stop him from going, I tried to trick him
with an earth-based
attachment to me to keep him from going, I had to witness him go
down there with the
altered bodies, there to that feast
a recovery that
exposes itself as an expectation
as if to speak
requires dream
single lines staged
as tracks
we are not
stating a truth
a truth would
require more negotiation than water rights
an expectation
relegates mystery to a rack
it may be true
that he was saying “dismissal”
it may be true we
expected more, then gradually less
as if a dream expires
[Originally
published in NHS 2008, http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs08/Akilah_Oliver.htm.]